In other words

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining, in the days of our children, the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. ~Theodore Roosevelt

Oooh scary

Wednesday, 7:26 pm

By Kate

Mute button

Wednesday, 4:37 pm

By Kate

Oct

20

2010

I turned the television on to catch the early news and weather. Immediately an ad came on for a local Republican teabaggy candidate. About all this Republican says is “I’m going to cut taxes. I’m in favor of cutting taxes.” I wonder if he would enjoy living in his perfect free market, totally tax-free, privatized society. I have a feeling not. By the time he and his cronies had finished privatizing everything and paid the fees for every big and little service and road use that they currently take for granted, they’d probably look back fondly on the whole idea of taxation and somehow the whole mess would be the Democrats’ fault.

But anyway. The ads are on in full force and I refuse to listen to or watch them. They are like fingernails down a blackboard. Every time one comes on I hit the mute button. Their ad money is wasted on me. Guess that’s a good thing.

Twenty-three is an exciting age

Wednesday, 11:51 pm

By Kate

Oct

13

2010

Since his graduation, the lad has lived here working as a beat reporter for the local news rag and as a cook at a local eatery while applying for every possible position under the sun and trying to decide if he wants to go back to graduate school and/or in which direction he wants to go to get the rest of his life started. This past Friday, things started hopping. He was summoned to New York City over the weekend, had a couple of interviews, arrived back home late last night, had to write and submit a news article today, and by tonight was accepted as an intern with MediaGlobal at United Nations Headquarters in New York where he will be trained to be a development and global issues writer/journalist with a focus on human rights and humanitarian issues. It’s an intensive six month stint and he starts on Tuesday. It’s one more notch in his belt toward wherever he is going...which, I have a feeling, is not, ultimately, going to be in the US. But that’s something to think about later. He is so excited he can hardly see straight.

So, for the next couple of days, we’ll be sorting his stuff out, figuring out what he needs to take and what he can leave behind. Since he will travel by mass transit, he’s limited to what he can carry. I’m not sure how he will manage the rest of what he needs. Well, he does have a very lovely girlfriend who lives a short commute over in Jersey and her parents loooove the lad. They have offered their minivan to the cause and he can also stay at their house for as long as he needs, while he’s getting himself sorted out.

He is negotiating with two of his former frat brothers over living space. They’ve offered him a rather spacious walk-in closet (no, really) with dimensions of about 6’x9’ for $350 per month in a really nice apartment in White Plains...with laundry facilities. He laughed initially. I said..."grab it. Laundry? In two months you’d kill for on-site laundry.” He can’t beat the price and it’s a place to hang his hat and rest his weary head at the end of the day. It’s for 6 months, no lease. Who could ask for more? They suggested that if he’d cook for them 4 nights a week, they’d knock off more rent. He is a good cook and they know this about him. They haven’t had a decent meal in weeks. Well, I have heard of unconventional living arrangements over the years, so this doesn’t sound all that bad to me. Especially that rent in New York City.

It’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be one heck of an amazing opportunity. And it almost makes me wish I was twenty-three again. Not quite, but...you know. It’s so much fun seeing them starting to spread their wings that you want to spread yours right along with them. I’m so pleased for and proud of him.

Windows

Saturday, 10:59 am

By Cyn

Oct

09

2010

OK, I am in a state of total and absolute frustration....Yeah, yeah, I know, there are BIG issues in this world and in some of my friend’s lives, but right now, right this second I am annoyed with window cleaning. Does anyone have any tried and true tips? I have just done the front and back windows in my car for the 88th time in a week and still streaking and filmy (and no one smokes so is not that). Started doing all the windows in the house, they are easy cause they are the replacement ones. I finish, they look pretty good, go back and all streaky. We do not live near the ocean so not that....

I have used windex and every other brand of cleaner, use the vinegar, rubbing alcohol, etc. formula my mom and dad always used, paper towel to wipe with, microfiber cloths that are supposed to be great, newspaper and lord only knows what else.

SO, any tips you have would be SO appreciated.

And yeah, I know this is not exactly a scintillating blog topic, but best I can come up with at the moment!!

Get Ready for Web 3.0

Sunday, 1:28 pm

By Cyn

Oct

03

2010

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, once said, “The web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.” It’s only a matter of time before web 3.0—better known as the “semantic web”-- rolls around, making web 2.0—the web as we know it today—a thing of the past. Though there is a debate among experts as to when exactly web 3.0 will arrive, most predict it’s sooner rather than later. Read more....Get Ready for Web 3.0

Feeding the hate

Sunday, 9:53 pm

By Kate

Sep

26

2010

The following tortured piece arrived in my email this afternoon. It came from an individual who we might charitably call conservative, although I believe she has gone well over the edge into right wing lunacy. But she is sincere. She is sincerely afraid of many things. And Muslims currently top the list. When you are sincerely afraid, you most certainly need a villain. And since the Russians and Communists don’t fit the bill anymore, it falls to those 1.5 or more billion Muslims to step up because 9 of those 1.5 or more billion did something really, really bad.

If you go go through this email line by line to pick out the logical fallacies, misinformation, blatant bigotry based on nothing but bigotry, there’s not much left. And while it might not alarm a whole lot of delicately shaded Americans to read garbage like this, I am sure that living as an average, law-abiding Muslim-American is absolutely terrifying these days. This sort of trash is feeding a growing hatred with misinformation and sheer nastiness disguised as scholarship. This sort of stuff is going to end up being deadly for someone (or many someones) who never harmed a soul.

Muslim Americans are the folks who have greater cause for fear and I think it is intolerable and unforgivable that our politicians, clergy, and media aren’t making a huge and loud stink about the rampant bigotry that has become politically correct in this country. As we might have observed recently, more than a few are buying into it as a political or ratings expediency. The few lone voices of reason are being drowned out.

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components.

Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.

When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well. Here’s how it works:

As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:

From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves—along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris, we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections in:

From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic
cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:

After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:

100% will usher in the peace of ‘Dar-es-Salaam’—the Islamic House of Peace. Here there’s supposed to be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madra sses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in:

Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons.

“Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel.”—Leon Uris, ‘TheHaj’

It is important to understand that in some countries, with well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law. The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts, nor schools, nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. The children attend madrasses. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death. Therefore, in some areas of certain nations, Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power than the national average would indicate.

Today’s 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world’s population. But their birth rates dwarf the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and all other believers. Muslims will exceed 50% of the world’s population by the end of this century. (Ponder this for a moment)

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swore in Kareem Shora, ‘a devout Muslim’ who was born in Damascus, Syria, as ADC National Executive Director as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).

*NOTE: Has anyone ever heard a new government official being identified as a devout Catholic, a devout Jew or a devout Protestant...? Just wondering.

Devout Muslims being appointed to critical Homeland Security positions? Doesn’t this make you feel safer already??

Was it not “Devout Muslim men” who flew planes into U.S. buildings 9 years ago?

Was it not a Devout Muslim who killed 13 at Fort Hood?

Please forward this important information to any who cares about the future of our country